Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Mark Lievisse Adriaanse
2022-2023
Home institution
NRC
Country of origin (home institution)
Netherlands
Discipline(s)
Information and communication sciences
Sociology
Theme(s)
Democracy, Citizenship, Governance
Globalization
Public Policies
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Mark Lievisse Adriaanse studied politics and philosophy at Leiden University, followed by Journalism & Media at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2017, he has been working at daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad, first as political editor Justice & Security, as a political reporter between 2020 and 2022, and as a general reporter since May 2022. He writes about topics of democracy, power (and the lack thereof), and the intersection of political decisions and societal effects. In 2020 Mark Lievisse Adriaanse received both “De Tegel” and “De Loep”, two prestigious prizes for in-depth journalism, for his reconstruction of the first six months of the corona crisis (together with Derk Stokmans).
"I'm a reporter with Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, covering a broad range of issues from politics to football, from small daily events to big news stories. Previously, I was a national (political) reporter. In 2021, I won a Tegel award (Dutch Pulitzer) in feature writing and a Loep award in investigative reporting for a story on the first six months of the corona crisis in the Netherlands (together with Derk Stokmans). In 2025, my book WAT IEDEREEN AANGAAT (WHAT TOUCHES ALL) was published."
Research Project
The Postmodern Neoliberal Challenge to Democracy and the Rise of Populism
Mark Lievisse Adriaanse has been selected for the Journalist-in-Residence fellowship 2022. For five months starting September, he will take a break as political reporter at NRC Handelsblad to fully focus on a book on the democratic crisis in current liberal democracies.
Mark Lievisse Adriaanse will be working on his book project on the postmodern neoliberal challenge to democracy and the rise of populism, analysing the democratic crisis that liberal democracies are in. What are the causes of the increasing powerlessness of politics? And why is the populist response so appealing? In his book, Mark Lievisse Adriaanse looks for an explanation for the inability of politics to tackle the major problems of our time – to get a grip on climate change, on large (tech) companies and on public services that do not deliver what citizens expect.
Research Interests:
Democratic crisis and neoliberalism; Populism and political powerlessness; Contemporary governance challenges